National Reports:
LEWIS, SHIMON WINCELBERG,WALTER K.
National Reports Love, Peace and Moral Re-Armament By Shimon Wincelherg SOME months ago. the New York Times ran a full-page ad, headed "For All Men Everywhere" and "donated as a national...
...Frank N. D. Buchman?] says...
...Dues were collected and literature was bought without pressure...
...Frank N. D. Buchman on June 4. 1954 at the opening of the World Assembly for Moral Re-Armament, an international movement of which he is the head and founder...
...says Widow Waggle, the cook, and leads her kitchen crew in a song about her late husband's Favorite dish, "New World Omelet," based on a recipe calling for "some harmony," "unselfish livin' In the ton," and what sounded like a wider application of the Marshall Plan...
...4) The reactionaries in union leadership won't let him talk at union meetings...
...Then, in complete sobriety, he writes: "Take the question of Coca-Cola...
...The vast crowd insisted on an encore...
...the New York Times ran a full-page ad, headed "For All Men Everywhere" and "donated as a national service by a group of citizens representing both management and labor...
...With its top leaders in prison, and many of its best cadres underground, most local clubs have been steadily disintegrating...
...Among the platitudes voiced by the cast at one point or another, on which surely even Pegler and Pravda would have no difficulty seeing eve to eve...
...Austria...
...I want to talk...
...Switzerland...
...By Walter K. Lewis THE U.S...
...Plant and factory workers are to be transferred from local clubs to industrial clubs...
...Jewish, civic, political and fraternal groups...
...as well as by stations in Canada...
...Or against...
...Parent-Teacher Associations are also on guard against Communist tactics...
...such as picket the Justice Department to free a victim of the Smith Act—he had been threatened with expulsion if he didn't...
...It's all about "Joth" Jotham, a stern and stuffy rancher in the Sierras, who controls a reservoir but withholds its water from the people of the drought-stricken valley because he won't "make deals with drunks or money-wasters...
...Party Voice does reveal, however, a new method of deploying the party's membership...
...Party Voice was embarrassingly muted...
...Considerably less of a non sequitur is the story of John, "the vice president of a national labor organization...
...How do I get the answer to drink...
...Punch...
...It can lead to an actual contempt for America, and has nothing to do with real patriotism—the feeling of national pride which should imbue every Communist...
...Ways of improving the party's propaganda are also discussed...
...He spoke to them about dues, "informing them of the registration" (the procedure now being used instead of party membership cards) and "possibilities of attending classes at Jefferson School...
...You are taking the city by storm...
...There were three known "comrades" in the mill and the organizer sought one of them out: "The first visit met with reluctance from the comrade to do anything...
...Party Voice, a monthly party periodical which often appears only bimonthly, diagnoses and provides tested remedies for Communist illnesses...
...Buchman related, after John had told the man how he himself had found "the guidance of God," "was to go back to put things right with his local union leaders, to be honest about his underground political activities, and to put things right with his wife and family...
...Many of them, however, are on the alert for CP maneuvers...
...Party Voice is also concerned with infiltration of mass organizations...
...I studied the text with particular interest, because I had reported on MRA activities before and had become intrigued by the solution it offers to the world's ills, large and small...
...Thus democratic organizations in fields like civil rights, housing, schools, etc., must redouble their alertness...
...I can't see bow fussin' gets folks anywhere...
...Then, just as it looks as if there's going to be a shooting war between the haves and the have-nots, a Buddha-like cowhand named Spindle mysteriously intervenes and persuades both sides to fall on each other's necks in a flurry of apologies, like "A man gets tired of sinnin'," "Brothers are meant to work together...
...White-collar workers in community clubs, however, will be used to build more of such clubs by recruiting members of mass organizations...
...A sample prayer, suggested by Spindle, goes...
...called in to settle the problem of a union that was divided by political and personal ambitions...
...Robert Schuman...
...Meaning his brother Seth, one of the valley people, who "wasn't as sober as he might have been" one evening some years back, when his sobriety might have saved his brother's son...
...Its text was a broadcast given by Dr...
...Here we find nothing but satisfaction and a great hope...
...Reds Keep Heads Above Water (Gulp...
...5) Different shifts make it hard for the comrades to get together...
...which have not yet been adopted as mass forms by the American workers...
...Jotham Valley itself turned out to be a clean, fast-paced, competentlystaged musical, featuring a number of moderately catchy tunes...
...Our party must select for special concentration those mass organizations in the community which most influence the workers, primarily the Negro, Puerto Rican and nationality groups...
...To carry out this program we must have every comrade in a functioning club, regular meetings with great attention and guidance so as to make the club the center of struggle in projecting and carrying out the fight for peace within the party and out into the community...
...What were some of the main problems as this comrade saw them...
...former Prime Minister of France, is quoted as having said of MRA...
...The organizations earmarked as targets in this order included Negro...
...The Mayor of Capetown, after a precedent-breaking interracial rally at Capetown's City Hall, admits...
...He goes on to sound the death knell for the Pete Seeger hootenany set by insisting that too much emphasis has been placed on such "forms of culture as folksinging, etc...
...But the organizer finally succeeded in winning the old man's confidence, the article tells us...
...Spindle does not fail to explain what it is that qualifies him to function so nicely as deus ex machina...
...MRA appeared to drift in a kind of rose-tinted no-man's-land, in which all conflict was based on little misunderstandings, a background of domestic disharmony, or an insufficient application of Brotherly Love...
...Like my friend Frank [Dr...
...are "Ain't none of us perfect...
...and such crisp similes as "Husbands is like newspapers—you gotta know how to read 'em...
...Its ideological message, however, still struck me as resolutely obscure...
...Buchman's speech in the Times ad was an account of MRA's more recent accomplishments and what various world leaders had said about it...
...And the Rector of El Azhar University in Cairo says, "MRA is working to spread the principles of peace, love and sound morals without individual and national differences...
...Commentary...
...At the time, my uncharitable impression had been that, amid today's political battles...
...I have no doubt that there are comrades in our movement who have not read a single American book outside of progressive literature in many moons, but who can discuss in detail the latest Soviet book or periodical from China...
...There was a feeling of hopelessness and passivity...
...On the religious front, Jotham Valley ranges from the stern some-folksjust-don't-have-the-guts-to-lead-cleanupright-lives approach to the more whimsical one of referring to the Almighty as the "Answer Man...
...and "I guess if you can stop bein' ornery, I can...
...Coca-Cola is an accepted popular drink here, and does not symbolize the policy of the Government...
...Germany, Italy...
...The ad tantalizingly failed to specify the nature of the change, but skipped right on to the sequel: "Afterward, an international official of the union said to him, 'John, can I drive you the 450 miles to the airport...
...Buchman, afterward also found that "when I took a good look at myself in the mirror...
...How can I unite my home...
...Holland...
...These conclusions are drawn from the pages of the party's internal literature, which is frantically calling for a revival of party action through the infiltration of democratic groups...
...As a matter of fact, we have many comrades who have been brought up on Soviet culture and who are not familiar with the cultural life of our own people...
...I'm through runnin' my own affairs...
...Buchman's report, their latest "ideological play," The Boss, is said by a French Socialist paper to have managed "to pose the immense problem of the happiness of man and then to answer it in an indisputable fashion in barely over an hour...
...From now on you're the boss...
...The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has revoked charters where it became apparent that Communists had taken over its chapters...
...Thus, the Section Educational Director of a club operating among hotel workers explained how difficult it was for him to contact his "clients" because of their uncertain hours...
...This is particularly emphasized in a Party Voice piece by Andrew Montgomery, who tells of the mental anguish he suffered when he was "caught'' in traffic while a Memorial Day parade was in progress: "At first, hesitantly, and a little embarrassed...
...The party's summer resort base...
...Communist party has been fighting a losing struggle in the past few years...
...U.S...
...3) The party organizer comes to his house in broad daylight and parks his car in front of it...
...I found out where the nation's sins were...
...The next day, two of the MRA force visited his mother 60 miles away in the hut where she lives...
...Alternating with such firm expressions of approval were several bits of human-interest material: "John Ngcobo...
...Some years ago...
...He finally had to operate through a third person and describes how he eventually reached one member and then another...
...Zulu baritone on the BBC...
...with his chuckle and his great big grin...
...As described in Dr...
...But slowly, and firmly, the thought came to me: 'Why should I feel reluctant to salute the flag?'" After further describing the resurgence of his patriotic feelings, he states that "Communists are patriots" and spells out what the party is lacking: "There exist in our party some trends of cultural and intellectual exclusiveness which border on snobbery and are a distinct liability to the progressive movement...
...the Jewish Labor Committee conducted an educational series designed to school leaders of democratic organizations in Communist methods...
...I felt I had hindered the settling of a national strike because I had given my husband nothing but censure...
...The broadcast was carried nationwide by CBS...
...1) He was an old man: he couldn't speak English very well: the company and the FBI were . . . really making it tough for him...
...Pakistan...
...He also mourns the failure of Communists to applaud American athletes competing with their Soviet counterparts...
...How can I unite the union?'" "His decision," Dr...
...Latin America...
...Organizer Dorothy Pearl offered this criticism of the Daily Worker: "Our comrades are reading the Daily Worker only sporadically for the reason, I feel, that its language is sectarian...
...Trieste...
...Belgium...
...At times I looked up and down the street and hoped, inwardly, that none of my 'left' friends were looking at me...
...For example...
...Montgomery's analysis set off a verbal explosion at Communist party headquarters...
...Everybody is waitin' for the other feller to be different...
...who took an hour to make up my face...
...France...
...Surely, no one but a drama critic could quarrel with that...
...The course that this drive will take was charted by Simon Gerson...
...One is his assignment to a mass organization...
...Story and various other publications...
...Especially since just one thing about it had eluded me so far...
...Americans for Democratic Action has set up special screening boards to cope with the situation...
...An anonymous article in a recent issue described how a club in a steel mill town was "pulled together from decay" by an astute organizer...
...two is his regular reading of the Daily Worker and the Worker...
...I was shaken by what you said...
...The particular problems of organization pertaining to different professional and industrial groups are also taken up...
...Luxembourg, the Saar...
...The club met regularly during the strike...
...These defensive measures are obviously having their effects...
...It is one thing for the French people to wage a struggle against this drink which symbolizes the role of Wall Street in their country...
...This has been a basic problem of our paper for a long time, and we feel it should speak to the masses in their own language, rather than reading like a Political Affairs pamphlet...
...This is wrong...
...6) His wife and kids object to his party membership...
...Nigeria and Ceylon...
...I had spent my evenings at drinking parties...
...who "must be a swell guy...
...These told how in their cases Moral Re-Armament had averted Communism, labor friction, or the divorce court...
...But all that emerged was some bitter comment, in Political Affairs...
...But it is quite an entirely different thing within the United States...
...In 1954...
...Japan...
...And that was precisely what MRA stood for...
...The Communists, it appears, are determined to use them to solve their own political and psychological problems...
...personal, social, national and supernational...
...He told the workers that the only way to unite the world is by change...
...The Communists, it seems, are upset because "left-led unions" have taken the party's place in the political arena...
...It's something a "feller" once told him...
...The theme of salvaged marriage plays a great role in MRA testimonials...
...This changed union official, according to Dr...
...I had been a fashion mode...
...Conceivably, MRA's playwrights have polished their technique since...
...It now met with a purpose and with some perspective...
...Shimon Wincelberg has written for The New Yorker...
...For Communist literature contains a great deal of wailing from members who complain that, despite their desire to coexist with democratic organizations, their efforts have been thwarted...
...Camp Unity, has now become Wingdale Lodge and has moved its offices from Union Square to Times Square in order to win unsuspecting recruits...
...I started to salute each [flag...
...And his wife provides an even more graphic clue to the nation's labor unrest: "When I met Moral Re-Armament, I saw I was responsible for the failure in our marriage...
...Jotham Valley's recipe for World Peace is well-meaning...
...because of an impending steel strike...
...7) If he's too active and loses his job...
...That man is now a force for unity...
...he's too old to get another one...
...As the member is being approached for his dues, let us discuss two other questions with him...
...Indeed, many of them have ceased to function altogether...
...just back from England, sang...
...when I went to review Jotham Valley, a "sparkling musical of the Sierra country" shown admission-free to packed houses in some of Los Angeles' largest theaters to acquaint Californians with MRA's philosophy, the curtain-calls after each performance went to noteworthy MRA converts...
...Those comrades who stop drinking it for political reasons demonstrate nothing but their own inability to understand that it is impossible to substitute internationalism for national pride at this stage of the struggle...
...2) The part] asks him to do things he just couldn't carry out...
Vol. 38 • May 1955 • No. 22
